[MAP CONTEST] Stalingrad Station Feedback Thread

This thread is for all feedback related to the map "Stalingrad Station" as part of Relic's 2v2 Map Making Contest. This map has made by a member of the community and they would LOVE of your feedback to help them iterate on and improve their map before the next submission deadline of the contest.

Comments

ROUND #1 REVIEW
GOOD:
1. I really love the look of this map. Very cool post battle feel. Feels very urban which is very hard to do.

BAD:
1. A little tight feeling. Four main paths to middle. Could be easily blocked by wire, ghost trenches, and MGs.
2. Some light vehicles did not seem to want to get thru the sides. They took weird paths. Just something to think about.
3. Two large smoke stacks cover your vision in key area on right. A couple large buildings also block sight. This is the problem with making a realistic urban map. The taller buildings block sight too much.
4. The mirrored NE/SW points/trench areas block pathing a little too much. Trench size could be reduced to allow the point to moved out of the direct path from base to middle.

POSSIBLE CHANGES:
1. In the middle, the large train sections block sight and may even after damaged. This creates vagueness as to where you can see. However they are a major focal point of the map so I am not sure I would remove them.
2. The large areas in front of the bases will allow for protected mortar wars. This and the small number of narrow lanes may make this an MG/Mortar fest which most high level players hate with a passion.
3. Are the small buildings on East/west points balanced? They could be I did not try to test them.
4. Maybe open a path between middle and outside lanes. I would open it right at the junction of the middle and side lane buildings. This will allow more side to side movements. If you try to flank and get overwhelmed there is no way to move units over to assist. Your only option is to retreat. This would also help attacking units flank behind the side lanes, etc.

SCORE:
7/10 - As it stands now this map may get a lot of vetoes due to the lack of flanking possibilities. Which would be a shame because it has a fantastic feel and look. I almost feel like I could root thru the rubble and find treasure

The overall feel of this map is fantastic. Very atmospheric and very "Stalingrad".

Small issue. There is green cover outside the central VP capping circle on the Northern side but only yellow on the south. While the train blocks sight either way, this cover imbalance might make it easier for North to push South off of this point.

Regardless of changes, indirect fire weapons will be very powerful on this map. However, to combat this somewhat, it might be worth removing the building that overlooks the trenches on each side, and replacing it with a flanking route into the trench area, similar to the adjacent route that allows access to the cutoff.

Really simulates the feeling of fighting in Stalingrad, but a bit too much, there are many clutch points where units can be just squished, and the main bases have only 2 exits which can be used by the enemy team to ''bully'' if you get what i mean. But all in all id say the maps pretty well made.
PS: artillery too op on this map.
Balancing: 7/10
Looks: cant judge since PC is a potato and runs only on lowest settings, but layout is nice.
Gameplay: 8/10

Stalingrad station
* As good as it gets in terms of visuals and employing a theme imho, I love the rails and industrial look
* Would be great to see some night time ambience or weather to mix it up a bit
* Some of the obstacles normally I think are normally green cover - like rail carriages in the central section provide 0 cover, is this intended? Solid metal full height rail carriages providing no cover seems not very realistic.
* Visibility over the aforementioned carriages is blocked, the game is pretty new to me so this may be intended, but from the games I played with carriages I didn’t notice this before. Effect is my troops sit there idle doing nothing until I move them around
* Like seeing the big central square with wehrmacht buildings, adds great immersion. Most of the action is on the other side by the VPs, if the buildings were turned the other way I'd get to see the detailed side of the building more often which for me is what its all about, game play fun with the eye candy.

Certainly a unique map this one. The enclosed spaces around the large and destroyed buildings allows for an easy defense, but it's at the openess of the central area that it shines. Flanking is hard of course.

I could say fuel is a bit too protected, making it harder to sabotage your enemy's income, but it spices things up. It looks pretty good nonetheless and everything blends pretty well. This being my fourth contest map, I'm starting to feel like there's an overuse of railways though. We'll see.

Stalingrad Station
Good
1. Mirror Map
2. Excellent line of sight (the train cars around the station itself are expertly placed and are very influnetial when used by infantry against machine guns
3. able to easily cut off resource points forcing conflict
4.The building are placed well and allow for the establishment of an early game fortress however low health
render them very vulnerable to enemy armour so they do not last long
this results in good balance
5. The flanking roads are easily defendable with a MG and anti guns in combination mines
Bad.
1. if either side (imparticular the British) are able to establish a fortress on the enemies side of the station it is near impossible to remove them
2. The small size of the map render long range artillery nearly useless when attacking fortifications as counter artillery or a quick counter attack will be
easily to destroy the artillery with ease
Honestly my favorite map that i reviewed

GOOD
1. good base positioning for both teams, with both players being close together and being opposite to the enemy players
2. capture points can cut off fuel and munition points very easily
3. plenty of light cover throughout the map that can be effectively used by both teams at any stage in the game
4. not all buildings are at full health
5. sight lines restricted due to train cars around the capture points. this is good because it allows for flanking of enemy troops while remaining hidden

BAD
1. garisonable buildings watch over the middle points and can defineatly be exploited by both teams in the holding of the capture points
2. to0 easy to turtle or fortify once pushed past the capture points
3. very hard to counter the turtle or fortification

MISCELLANEOUS
1. capture points make the map look like a mirror map however it doesn't feel like one

The overall balance is pretty good, but I feel it slightly favors the player(s) starting on the top of the map. The resource points seem to be evenly placed, at approximately the same corresponding places for top and bottom. The one advantage for the top forces I saw was a gap in the buildings going horizontally, that the bottom doesn’t have. This could lead to the top forces having to take less time getting to resource points, while the bottom forces must go around the edges. Both of the 4-5 closest resource points for both top and bottom have abundant cover points for ‘green’ or ‘yellow’ coverage. I disliked how the bottom player has an extra ‘entry lane’ to cover. – While playing the bottom, I had to cover two points to the middle area resource points, while the top player only had one point for the corresponding area on their half of the map, so they could more easily concentrate forces and funnel fire to incoming units.

Yes, there are plenty of garrison-able buildings. The close quarters of this map favors units like Soviet Guards anti-tank rifle units, and small tanks like the T-70. However, the buildings can be destroyed, rendering the battle to a street-by-street anti-tank infantry war. The proximity of the resource points means whoever cleans up in a battle and has an infantry unit survive can turn the tide of a battle for several minutes.

The visuals are great. I enjoyed the hazy bombed out atmosphere. The random puddles were also a nice touch.
The vehicle pathing could be better. Some units in groups will go around buildings the wrong direction, exposing themselves to AT fire.

Line of sight is just right. You can only see a bit in front of you, as it should be in a crazy, smoky urban battle.
The combat flow is infantry-dominated. As I mentioned earlier, whoever wins a fight with some infantry left over can really clean up for several minutes, while the enemy rebuilds. This map will usually feature infantry intensive fights with AT weapons, imo. There are just too many corners for vehicles to maneuver, and AT infantry is far less expensive than a medium/heavy tank.

Overall I really enjoyed the map, except the extra building gap for the top forces.
Grade: A-

Overall map balance
Map is looking mostly equal to both spawns, so overall is good.

Cover balance/design
A lot of green cover on both sides of the map, looking ok. VP cover design looks balanced.

Balance of garisonable buildings
VP garisons are very strong, can be abused with Soviet forward base ability, reducing HP of all building to 10% might be a solution so Soviet player will invest in the risk.

VP and resource balance/design
VP are good, top fuel sector is a bit into building, comparing to bot fuel, not balance issue, but visually is not very good. Right ammo point has vision blocking wall so close combat units can use it for earning advantages comparing to left ammo that is open.

Visuals
Despite idustrial? styling of the map, it is looking a bit empty for me, wishing to see more details.

Readability/lighting
Good, maybe make night version? Will look more interesting comparing to other industrials.

Cutoff design
Top fuel cutoff looks easier to defend comparing to bottom one. Also garison hp problem as I mentioned before could be used for forward base abuse and auto gg after. (Soviet can easily clear garison for itself with m3 flames, and convert it into forward base after). This is issue for both fuel cutoffs.

Infantry and vehicle pathing
Infantry pathing looks ok, had problems with light vehicle on bottom side of the map between base sector and garison, multiply move orders sometimes makes vehicle too use strange pathings which causes stucking, this is only pathing problem, same for AT guns crew.

Line of sight
Liked VPs design with line of sight. Main problem is with right ammo point design, as it was mentioned before.

Combat feel/flow
Emplacement/arty focused map, flames needed to feel comfortable, also garison call-ins can be good for breaking lines. Feels good but Pak43 can be an issue late game.

General polish
Fixing of pathing on bottom side, redesign of the ammo points so they can be same comparing to each other, garisons hp reduce to eliminate forward base abuse. Bottom cutoff needs a bit of polish with covers, just like top cutoff, so they can be defended equally. Maybe add some more details on the map, so it will not look that empty in some places, that will not break pathing (maybe effects or objects that can be destroyed with light vehicle). Night version can look better, or rain version, or both.

Overall map feel
Playstyle reminds me Ettelbruck Station map, don't know is it good or bad. Garison fix will eliminate this comparing. At this state map looks very familiar with ettelbruck station and pripyat sector, which is not good. Visual updates can fix this problem so map will look a bit unique. If grade needed it is about 5/10.

This is probably one of the best looking custom map I've played so far, with alot of STALKER, METRO feeling to it. It really captures the feeling of a scarred, war ravaged urban train station, that alone makes this map highly immersive and atmospheric to play on.

The balance is mostly on point, though all the points in the middle do seem to slightly favor the player 1,2 from the top side. I've attempted multiple small and (rather meaningless)tests on both sides with bots and just obverse and let the bots duke each other out, they all mostly ended up with the bot on the top holding majority of the points and holding hack attacks. The covers provided for the bottom team is abit too far recessed behind compared to the top team, the bottom team has to leave their cover and fight in the open if they ever hope to gain a foot hold on the points while the top team mostly do not have to do so. The top fuel point also has a destroyed building on the front that acts as a funnel that forces vehicles to slow down and make turns and also makes attack forces more susceptible to ambush while the bottom fuel point do not have such advantage.

There also seem to be a slight performance spike at the start of the map when I played as player 3/4, the fuel tank scenery on the bottom team's home base would explode every time the match starts, causing slight performance drops, other than that it looks great.

Congratulations again on making the final cut in the 2v2 Map Making contest! All of the maps that remain are of an extremely high quality, and we would again like to thank all map makers for their time and talent.

Our Relic Map Judge has provided some additional feedback below for your consideration. This feedback is intended for integration purposes after the conclusion of the Map Contest, should this map be selected for inclusion in game.

• Some frustrating pathing. Group your crush type objects together (Light, Medium, Heavy)
-Allows the map to open up more and more as the game advances from Early to Late game
• Double check LoS on objects. Some imbalances persist.
• Try and keep key resource points more open to allow for easier engagements.
• Victory Points are a bit too close together.
• There’s fairly balanced point distance/distribution between each team.
• I like the fuel points being separate from the Victory points. Adds more key locations to fight over instead of everything being centralized.